Uganda’s Christine Ondoa has HIV/Aids questions to answer 1

Aids/HIV infections in Uganda are rising by about 1.5% a year, bucking a trend that saw the country being touted as the model for HIV/Aids prevention and treatment back in the 1990s.

15,600 of new HIV infections in 2010 were among MSM: Aids Information Center report

There is an ugly secret as to why the numbers are rising and will continue to rise as surely as night follows day:

The government of Uganda has totally ignored homosexuals, men who have sex with men (MSM) and sex workers in their HIV/Aids prevention and treatment campaigns.

First off, and for the benefit of many Ugandans who continue to display a worrying failure to understand the definitions:

Homosexuals are men/women who are only emotionally attracted to those of their gender. Men who have sex with men are … men who have sex with men, and they can do so even when they are not emotionally attracted to them, such as in prison where there is no alternative!

Then there are also men/women who are emotionally attracted to both women and men respectively.  These are called bisexual.

MSM can be straight, gay or bisexual. What unites MSM in Uganda is that they generally indulge in gay sex in secret (down low) unless they have come out to their loved ones and friends which is almost unheard of.

The fact of the matter is that, mostly due to the stigma surrounding homosexual sex in Uganda and much of Africa, homosexual men are still sleeping with and/or marrying women in large numbers. Their homosexual feelings don’t go away, of course, so they keep up respectable married facades and then sleep with men whenever their gay johns hit them.

If you are walking down the aisle with your man he is not gay, yes? If your son is walking past you as he exits the church with his new bride and you are shedding tears of joy, you can breathe a sigh of relief because he is not gay, yes? If your son gives you a grandson, he is not gay, yes?

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Your boyfriend, husband, son, could very well be a man who has sex with men or a totally homosexual man who has found a way of compartmentalizing his gay feelings to please you, his relatives or fit into society.

“So, what is the problem if my son, husband, brother is gay and he has found a way of hiding it, up to and including having a family?” I hear you ask.

Because he is nonetheless still sleeping with men – in secret. Because he is doing so secretly, the chances are that he cannot keep one partner since he gets his gay kicks in whenever he can, wherever he can, with whoever he can. Even if he could settle with just one male partner, the infrequency of their rendezvous usually means that the partner will have sex with other men. After all, who is going to sit around waiting for his married lover to steal time off, perhaps once every month or quarter, to be with him?

Prayer can heal Aids: Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa

Unofficial figures suggest that there are at least 500,000 MSM and lesbians in Uganda. Let’s assume that only 250,000 of them are male (should be higher but never mind). Let us also assume that just 50,000 of the 250,000 are sleeping with men and women. Now imagine if the 50,000 have two female sexual partners; a wife and girlfriend on the side. If they were to catch HIV from a male or female partner, try to gauge the multiplication effect this might have on the men and women they are sleeping with, and the men and women the partners are in turn sleeping with. How does 100,000 new  infections from just that cohort sound?

Precisely.

That’s why it boggles the mind that Uganda’s Ministry of Health is still showing no interest at all in making the spread of HIV/Aids in the gay community the priority it should be. How can an entire cadre of sensible, educated, knowledgeable professionals really hide their heads in the sand in the face of such a glaring gap in their HIV/Aids prevention and treatment program?

How come the government is ignoring the damning research its own people have come up with?

Uganda’s Minister of Health, Christine Ondoa, surely has a lot of questions to answer.

Related articles

• Ugandan HIV campaign targets “cheaters” (gantdaily.com)
• HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda’s ‘anti-homosexuality bill’ would be disastrous for HIV response (crofsblogs.typepad.com)
• HIV-positive activist to Uganda: Stop impeding AIDS battle (76crimes.com)

HIV/Aids is already killing LGBTI Ugandans! 9

I have a prediction to make:

The headline-grabbing lawsuit brought by the friends of  Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) against Scott Lively in Massachusetts recently will likely not succeed.

The basis of the lawsuit is that Lively incited hate and violence against Ugandan gay men and women through proxies such as Stephen Langa and Martin Ssempa, ” for the decade-long campaign he has waged, in agreement and coordination with his Ugandan counterparts, to persecute persons on the basis of their gender and/or sexual orientation and gender identity.”

I think Scott Lively cannot be proved to have incited any persecution of gays in Uganda. Yes, he has on various occasions said things we don’t like about gay cures and how gays are terrible for Uganda,  Africa and the world. That’s just his opinion and he is entitled to it. I believe  American and Ugandan laws entitle him to those opinions, too.

But, one suspects, that the American friends of SMUG who filed the lawsuit (SMUG could not afford such a lawsuit) knew this, and their real motive was a public relations (PR) one.  Observers can debate whether they used the most cost-effective tactic or not. I think their tactics have a place in human rights struggles such as the one SMUG is engaged in.

Which brings me to the real reason for writing this:

I think we should be doing more to move the debate forward in the gay community in Uganda. A commentator, Frank McMullan, recently suggested that I do that instead of peppering activists with questions. I think he had a point.

So, what do I think the gay rights struggle in Uganda should be about?

The gay struggle needs to augment the “We are here, we are queer/They are killing us” gay human rights movement, now the only currency doing the rounds in activists’ circles in Uganda and around the world, with an additional, serious, movement targeting the health and wellness of gay Ugandans in Uganda.

The faces of ‘Gay Uganda’: Frank Mugisha & Kasha Nabagesera

The  “they are killing us” activists have a place still. It is just that it seems that judicial killing of gays is all we are talking about and everything else, such as advocating for equal access to specialized medical care that Ugandan heterosexuals take for granted, is but a parenthesis. The reason for this might be that the current crop of Ugandan advocates already have enough on their plates. Given their schedules, it would be surprising if they didn’t.

There is thus a need for a different, medically qualified (or trained) arm to focus on the less ‘sexy,’, less headline-grabbing health and wellness issues.

Uganda needs a separate “HIV/Aids is killing us” message to push for studies to establish statistics, trends of HIV/Aids among men who have sex with men, and the general LGBTI population. It goes without saying that there are infinitely more  Ugandan gay boys (especially) who have died of HIV/Aids, due to neglect and lack of care,  in the last five years than have been killed by mob action or the law because they are gay.

We thus need to let the nascent movements trying to make HIV/Aids in the gay community in Uganda a hot topic, too, have room to breath because we can’t wait for the fight against “killing the gays” to be won for the fight against HIV/Aids in the gay community to get organized. Think of it as a two-pronged approach: health/public health/HIV AND Gay Rights with different protagonists leading each one since the expertise required is different.

If you sense an undercurrent of criticism, it is intended. I am of the view that, in the quest for the  “they are killing us” dollars and media space,  the “HIV/Aids is killing us” message  in our community has been relegated to an afterthought.

Yet you read that the incidence of HIV/Aids in Kenya (where information is more readily available and the fight against the spread of  HIV/Aids in the gay community more concerted) is 35% among men who have sex with men. It stands to reason that the statistics are grimmer in Uganda where studies are stymied by government disinterest and, little to no coordination in the community.

The only professional study I have seen on the HIV scourge in the gay community in Uganda, the CDC’s Crane Survey Report (2008/9) suggests to me that we are sitting on a problem so serious as to make the effects of David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay legislation look like a walk in the park. If nothing is done on the HIV/Aids problem in the gay community, the 1.5% annual rise in the gay infections being reported countrywide will shoot to 5% and beyond – as surely as night follows day.

The HIV/Aids problem in the gay community in Uganda therefore needs to be made a much bigger priority than it is at the moment. It would be fair enough for the current faces of  the “they are killing us” message to argue that they neither have the time nor the competence to fight every battle.

That’s  why the Ugandans willing to fight the “HIV/Aids is killing gays”  fight should be actively encouraged to step up to lobby Uganda’s government and anyone else they think will listen. Our friends in America and elsewhere should also be encouraged by the already established representatives of ‘Gay Uganda’ to organize PR exercises for that message, too.

Related articles

• 2012 gone – bring on 2013 (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Large crowd of U.S. Gay Activists at MA Federal Court to Support Ugandan Gays against Pastor Scott Lively (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
• Ugandan sex workers post highest HIV rates (upi.com)
• 18,000 MSM Ugandans with HIV/Aids ignored
• The folly of ignoring the gay community in HIV prevention programs

35% of MSM in Kenya have HIV! 1

HIV incidence among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Kenya is as high as 35%, investigators report in the online edition of AIDS. Incidence was just 6% for bisexual men, but was 35% in men who only had sex with other men

This should be a terrifying wake-up call for every political leader in Africa but, sadly, it won’t because likely none of them is paying attention.The leaders that do, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Cameroon’s Paul Biya, would see this report as excellent news.

35%???!!!

Oh my goodness gracious me!

Second money quote:

A total of 449 HIV-negative MSM were recruited to the study. Of these, 372 (83%) reported sex with men and women. The remaining 77 men (17%) reported sex exclusively with other men.

Yes, that means that a lot of men who have sex with men are also having sex with women.  The repercussions for entire communities are too dreadful to think about but there is little point in pretending that our leaders understand this … or care.

It boggles the mind that with these startling statistics, leading government health professionals in sub-Saharan Africa seem to be mute. What such numbers means surely can’t be lost on them.

35%??? And this is just in the one country where studies have been done. What about places like Uganda where no research in this areas is likely to be done in the foreseeable future?

Related articles

• Malawi Prisoners at high risk of contracting HIV through homosexuality (nyasatimes.com)

The Sudanese need an education – fast!

The claims in this report are what you get when a government ignores education for a generation.

Money quote:

‘Ignorance, more than anything else, is responsible for viral transmission, it has nothing to do homosexuality or age differences. ‘If the government and political opposition are serious about tackling Sudan’s growing HIV infection rates, then safer sex education is the key.’

But of course!

If only they had kept abreast of world developments, the Sudanese government would have known this 20 years ago! Duh!

Related articles

• Sudan blames gay teen sex for AIDS (oblogdeeoblogda.me)

 

Dr. Paul Semugoma throws down the anal sex gauntlet 3

To the obvious discomfiture of Uganda’s officials, Dr. Paul Semugoma made a tour de force of a speech at the 2012 International Aids Conference in Washington, DC in which he deplored the failure of Uganda’s government to take the issue of men having sex with men (MSM) seriously.

First the sobering research numbers:

“It is estimated that the adult male HIV prevalence in Kampala is 4.5 per cent but the prevalence estimates among men who have sex with men (MSM) is 13.7 per cent. Most MSM still have sex with women, many are married, co-habit with women, and have biological children. MSM in Kampala appear firmly embedded in the general population.”

Such high numbers of infection in the MSM population point to the obvious point that this group is having a lot of sex without condoms. So, Dr. Semugoma suggested rectal microbicides.

Dr. Paul Semugoma

“Huh? Rectal what?” I hear you ask.

A rectal microbicide is a product, usually a gel, inserted into the anus so that it acts as protection against  sexually transmitted infections during anal sex.

In Uganda, where resources are scanty even with the best will in the world, it makes sense, as Semugoma argues, to offer these microbicides in form of a lube. Since, duh, lube is required for anal sex, it makes sense to provide MSM with lube which also serves as a microbicide.

Ahem, ahem.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t consulted on the scheduling because if I had been, the follow-on speaker should have been an official from Uganda’s government.

In any case, Semugoma, who came out as an openly gay Ugandan a few days ago, has thrown down the anal sex gauntlet.

“The epidemic in Africa is characterized as sexual, and there is nothing  about anal sexual, which is a big problem. It’s something that needs to  be addressed,” said Jim Pickett, founding Chair of IRMA, which has been  spearheading the development of rectal microbicides as a HIV prevention  tool among MSM.  “Creating something that is African-specific has been very key so that people know about anal sex and anal health.”

Yes, Mr. Simon Lokodo and your blinkered friends: gay men all over the world (and straight/bisexual ones, too) actually engage in consensual sexual conduct that often involves anal sex. None of your huffing and puffing will do away with that reality so you might want to put on your thinking hats and look at what to do about the implications for your brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fellow cabinet ministers, spouses who, lo behold, might come into sexual contact with a MSM who is having anal sex without any protection from HIV.

Over to you Ugandan officials. The ball is now in your court.

Transcript of Dr. Semugoma’s presentation can be found here and here.

The HIV war in black America has been lost!

It’s official. The war  to combat HIV/Aids among men who have sex with men (MSM) in black America is irretrievably lost.

Rod 2.0 summarizes the underlying issues. What stands out, in no particular order, is that:

• black youths, aged 13-19 have totally thrown caution to the wind and are having bareback sex at will
• black MSM  are too reluctant to be tested
• black MSM are too poor to get access to medical care when they find out they are HIV positive (which likely informs why they are reluctant to go for testing)
• black MSM are more likely not to know their HIV status than their white or Latino counterparts
• black gay activist/advocacy groups have not paid enough attention to HIV/Aids in the black community
• mainstream black organizations (such as churches) have largely ignored the gays and, thus, the HIV problem

Of course many will wax lyrical, a la Pollyanna,  about how we must all work together, get empowered,  face up to the problem, unite, sing Kumbaya and so on and so forth. Others still will wax indignant that the problem is … homophobia, implying that once the ‘homophobia’ is tackled, the problem will be brought under control.

All that is wishful thinking of course because most black gay men are not listening and, if they are, they don’t care about the message they are hearing.  We are thus faced with the same conundrum that those fighting to stamp out smoking know only too well; once you tell adults about the risk of smoking, there is practically nothing you can do if they choose to light up.

And so it is with the HIV/Aids prevention message.

Everyone, young and old, knows how HIV is mainly contracted, yet black MSM are continuing to catch it at epidemic rates. That points to willful volition, and there is nothing anyone can do about someone who has the information and still chooses to act in a way that puts him at risk.

The only solution to this runaway epidemic among black MSM is a cure. Not even the preventative Truvada development will help as that is too expensive for most black folks – even if they were willing to take a daily pill for when they may sleep with someone with HIV.

Unless a cure is found, HIV among black MSM will only continue to spread unabated. It’s time to accept that reality and focus on dealing with it.

Should gay men be allowed to donate blood?

Check out this Bossip article on whether the USA bad on gay men donating blood should be lifted. The thinking behind the ban seems to be that gay men lead dangerous sexual lifestyles so their blood stands a greater chance of being infected than everyone else’s. But what about female prostitutes or their male customers?” Someone rightly asks.

My view remains as follows: If you don’t want my blood, I will not give it. As the USA ban is showing, the country is the loser … now they have a blood shortage and are considering lifting the ban out of desperation. If you are the one who loses when I don’t give something I have, I fail to understand why the gay blood donation ban is our problem.

Back to the Bossip discussion, it is in the comments that, perhaps, the more enlightening views are to be found.

Money [unedited]  quote from a commentator calling him/herself Caribbeaninthehouse:

@Sasha boguie: why would any straight person want a fag blood huh, wouldn’t that make the straight person a fag too & wouldn’t the straight person becomes a fag & a poor excuse for a human being & a embarrassment to god.

Makes you sit up and wonder … there is anyone educated on this planet who actually thinks that sexuality can be passed on through a blood transfusion? In 2012?

Wow!

Related articles

• As blood donations decline, U.S. ban on gay donors is examined (cnn.com)
• China Lifts Ban on Lesbians Donating Blood [Lgbtq] (jezebel.com)
• Why are we bothered by the gay blood donation ban?

DIY HIV Testing Kit Approved in the USA 2

So the United States has approved a do-it-yourself (DIY) HIV home testing kit. The OraQuick In-Home HIV test will be available in a matter of months, allowing people to obtain a result within 20 to 40 minutes.

It was about time, too, given the realities surrounding HIV/Aids as we know them today.

The fact is that HIV/Aids is now the new diabetes – chronic but perfectly manageable. Even in sub-Saharan Africa where health services are as moribund as they will likely kill you merely by visiting them, you now stand a greater chance of dying of malaria or being run over and killed by a wayward motorcyclist on a busy street than of succumbing to HIV melancholia. And that can only be a good thing especially if one considers the sure death sentence HIV/Aids was only 20 years ago.

In 2012, going for an HIV/Aids test no longer requires preparing ropes, suicide pills or razor blades. HIV no longer portends the end of the world it used to and so the American initiative makes perfect sense since it recognizes that it is now more vital for everyone to know their status and seek treatment than to worry about what it might mean for one’s short-term fallibility should a test indeed be positive.

Listening to the American medical personnel who commented on the DIY approval on the BBC, I was dumbfounded when he said that almost a quarter (more than 250,000) of the people carrying the HIV/Aids virus in the USA don’t know their status. If that is the situation in a country where education and basic medical facilities are readily available, imagine what the reality is in the third world where those two elements are a luxury in most communities.

You might hear arguments about the need for counseling to make the reception of the HIV/Aids diagnosis palatable. But I am of the view that counseling is actually useless before one takes the test for the simple reason that it is usually conducted by strangers who cannot impact your decision-making in the few minutes it takes to take the test and find out the results. In that light, pre-testing counseling is overrated, and it works best if the ‘patient’ seeks out the counseling if they feel they need it rather it being foisted on them by a system that has long [erroneously in my view] assumed that counseling is of any benefit before the test is taken.

Therefore, the DIY HIV/Aids kit can’t come fast enough for the entire world.

Related articles

• HIV/AIDS policies vital for companies (times.co.zm)
• Obama: ‘National HIV Testing Day highlights the importance of HIV testing and the fight against HIV/AIDS’ (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Vatican Spreads Pro-HIV/AIDS Message By Ignoring Condoms (lezgetreal.com)

How to survive a plague

It’s vintage Andrew Sullivan in its eloquence. And it’s a timely reminder about what it takes to get governments to sit up and take the rights of minorities seriously. In a searingly moving testimony, Sullivan comments on the documentary that chronicles the HIV/Aids struggle in the gay community and how it focused minds on the desperate need for gay men and women to be treated in the same way as everyone else.

Money quote:

None of [the gay civil rights movement of the last 20 years] would have happened as it did, if we had not been radicalized by mass death, stripped of fear by imminent death, and determined to bring meaning to the corpses of our loved ones by fighting for the basic rights every heterosexual has taken for granted since birth.

Check out Andrew Sullivan’s commentary here.

Related articles

• How to survive a plague
• Andrew Sullivan: ‘I Never Understood The Power of a President’s Words Till That Day’ (crooksandliars.com)
• Andrew Sullivan Declares Obama “The First Gay President” (alan.com)
• Andrew Sullivan’s Own Goal (and My Assist) (commentarymagazine.com)
• Sullivan In Newsweek: (dgsmith.org)

East African Legislative Assembly passes HIV bill 1

The-flags-of-the-member-states-of-the-East-African-Community

Behind the Mask is reporting some great news coming out of the regional parliament of East Africa. It is still a little known and underrated body called the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), but it has put out a statement calling for all the regional governments to provide HIV/Aids health services to all citizens, including “vulnerable” groups without discrimination; a statement that will force the governments of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi to, at the very least, debate who the vulnerable groups are.

Logically, the strategy should be for activist groups to ensure that the debate should focus on who the vulnerable groups are;  orphans, waifs, male and female sex workers, women who are still treated as chattels by men, lesbian and gay men, prisoners and so on and so forth … then keep hammering away at it until none of them can be spoken of in isolation.

The EALA pronouncement provides an opportunity to  make Ugandan (East African, African) gay men and women part of the mainstream conversation. We, too, suffer from the same health issues as anyone else and that puts the focus on gay men and women who are asking for the right not to die of preventable diseases – a right no one will argue is borne out of thinking that gays are special as the argument has tended to be put forward, quite convincingly, whenever we say we are being persecuted or hated by Ugandans who we, rather unfairly, tar with the indiscriminate brush of homophobia.

As I have argued on a number of occasions, elsewhere, hate or persecution are amorphous concepts that most people in Uganda (Africa) don’t really understand unless they see one of their own beaten up in the streets or jailed, blood on the streets, bodies being put in the ground, that sort of thing.

It is arrant hyperbole to argue that Ugandans (for instance) are homophobic – most Ugandans may be bewildered by the concept of homosexuality, but they don’t walk anywhere near the circles we hang out in to have any impact on our lives one way or the other. The people hounding us are a tiny but very vocal minority whose agenda is selfish personal gain, but who nonetheless haven’t managed yet to turn the entire country into the kind of homophonic maniacs foreigners have been led to believe Ugandans are. The reason for this is that Ugandans (I think Africans in general) are simply not that kind of people.

It is also true to argue that it is safer to be a gay man in Uganda than it is in many parts of the United States of America. If you don’t believe this, try checking out how many people have been killed for being gay in Uganda (or jailed) in the last 10 years and compare them to how many have been attacked and even killed in various parts of America in just the last 3 years despite some of the best protections against homophobia one can find on the planet.

In that sense, then, gay men and women in Uganda don’t suffer from hate or persecution that should require governments in Europe to make hysterical phone calls to Yoweri Museveni threatening this and that if gays are not accommodated when they are also not making phone calls  asking him to end female genital mutilation, the arresting and jailing of journalists and opposition politicians, rounding up of street protestors and jailing them for years without trial and, of course, misuse of state funds which deny basic health services to millions, etc. All of these ills have claimed and continue to claim more victims than ‘gay hate’ and one can rightly argue that they deserve greater attention.

But once the debate shifts to ignoring vulnerable groups in the fight against HIV/Aids, with the government of Uganda itself admitting that HIV cases are going up again, then we have a solid case to make to the wider Ugandan population if we argue that gay men and women must be included in the strategy to check the spread of HIV. Every Ugandan will see that no one is asking for special consideration as has been argued where ‘gay persecution’ is concerned.

And how can you make the argument that gay men and women are being ignored in the fight against HIV/Aids, which the government’s own reports show they are, without mentioning men who have sex with men? How can you mention HIV/Aids provision for LGBTI and avoid talking about gay men and women? How can any government plausibly talk about providing access to health services for LGBTI and then also continue talking about making homosexual activity punishable by death and/or imprisonment?

See why the strategy and focus need to shift to HIV/Aids and health for all vulnerable groups, including LGBTI?

Related articles

• Uganda Human Rights Commission Report urges right to health for all
• Focus on LGBTI Health in Uganda imminent? (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda gives hope to LGBT people, resists outside pressure (76crimes.com)
• Uganda Becoming More Tolerant to Gays – HIV testing the next frontier (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• African NGOs talk shop in Banjul – pay lip service to HIV/Aids in LGBTIs (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda: Don’t exclude gay men from AIDS programs (76crimes.wordpress.com)
• Uganda debates whether gays are sick, mad or human beings (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• We lost the momentum with that Hardtalk Museveni interview! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)